PERIODIC PHOTOGRAPH  
I will display different photographs here at fairly regular intervals.

This headstone stands in the small village of Rathanna, on the slopes of Mount Leinster. The story behind this headstone has been told locally for decades and a ballad has also been written about this event.

On New Year's Day 1941 a German bomber who had been lost over Ireland decided to drop its load of bombs on what the pilot thought was open mountain-side and return to its base in Germany. Tragically the pilot did not know that there were houses so far up the slopes of the mountain and ended up dropping one of the bombs directly on the Shannon household.

As can be seen from the headstone, two of the women and a teenage girl were killed and another man injured. It was said that John Shannon ended up, uninjured, in the yard still in the bed he was sleeping on.

Germany apologised for this accident, but later went on to bomb the creamery in Campile, in South Wexford. The Germans claimed that this creamery was supplying foodstuff to the British army.

Rathanna church

A parish pump.

These were once the main water supply for a whole area. They are now only preserved for their ornamental and nostalgic value.

Telephone pole.

As Bob Dylan "sang"?, "Times they are a changin'".

I remember when these poles first went up and we heard of the arrival of the telephone to some of the well-off houses in our area. The first poles had only one crossbar as, only two houses were on this line. Later a second crossbar had to be added to allow for future development (the huge total of 4 telephone lines).

Now -as can be seen in the photo- individual wires on the insulators have been replaced by a single run of wire containing scores of pairs of insulated wires.

The ceramic insulators now only serve as a reminder of less demanding times, when one would go to a neighbours house to make the very rare telephone call. Even then it was difficult not to shout down the line as the distance to the person on the other end was still very much foremost in the mind and it was considered that a little more effort would be required.